Strawberry Clips

Steff got me these for my birthday. There's a bunch of other food related merchandise she also got me, but the documentation is somewhere else in some other picture folder. Aren't they just adorable? They're clips in the shape of strawberries!! I'm not too sure what exactly they're good for, but I've used them to keep my chips from going stale and as cute decoration as you can see on my laptop. There's a picture of me somewhere where I've gone a put the clips on my hair just for the heck of it, but I won't put those up here.

I think I'm in the dining room here and that doorway is the little kitchenette that Steff and I always monopolized. Hey, it's not like those girls were like cooking or anything, though come to think of it, my last year there were an awful lot of freshmen making bento every night. Don't get me started on that. Those girls are nasty. They don't clean up after themselves when they cook. Okay, so them not using hot water to wash the dishes is bad enough, but anytime they cook anything from ramen to stewed vegetables, I swear the kitchenette is always a forking mess. Packages, remnants, garbage, plates, all strewn about. Hey, at least when Steff and I cook, it's clean. And the refrigerator...they make a million onigiri to save time during the week, but they can't put them in a plastic bag or container so that when I get my ice cream they all don't avalanche on me?! No common sense, I swear to god. But yes, oh well. Kinda scary that these are the future mothers of Japan though.

Suidobashi Cheesecake Shaped Shrubbery

One day, I think maybe after school or something, Steff, Miyu, and I went to Suidobashi's Tokyo Dome Amusement Park something or another. Anyway, I saw this in the little courtyard below and was like, "Is that a garden in the shape of a cake?" Lo and behold, it was a little shrubbery set just hanging out down there that looked like a chocolate cheesecake with strawberries on it. Notice the slice that's sticking out. It's half a strawberry!!! Sliced right down the middle~!! Only in Japan. Seriously. Only in Japan do they make shrubbery in the shape of food. I think this country has an almost unhealthy obsession with food (despite the average adult weighing in at like 90 pounds) and making unedible, unconventional things into the shape of various food items. I think it's funny and kinda cool, but most foreigners usually have the 'wtf is that?!' look every time they see something like this.

I have this stuffed toy that is in the shape of an ebi furai. Who makes a soft toy in the shape of a fried shrimp with tartar sauce? I gotta take a picture of it one of these days. It's not small either. It's a pretty big sized soft toy--probably about the same volume as a normal pillow...just in the shape of an ebi furai..... But, on the other hand, this is exactly why I love Japan. Where else in the world would you ever see shrubbery in the shape of half a strawberry in soil that is meant to look like a chocolate cheesecake?